Without tip-toeing around the matter, Linus Torvalds made his preference in the GNOME vs. KDE matter quite clear on the GNOME-usability list: "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE." Also, "Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'."Update: More of the discussion here.

Yeah, that's really easy to say, without answering directly his claims. Yeah, it is a "strong" opinion ... or is it?

Its easy to say so not because what he said, but how he said so! I personally have a lot of gripes with the GNOME interface and I prefer KDE over GNOME any day unless they get their interface issues sorted out. But calling them 'Interface Nazis' is crap! He is a troll not for pointing out the issues but for the way he expressed his opinion!

This is so typical: criticize GNOME - you are labeled a troll, even if you are Linus.

Again, since it comes from a well- known figure [atleast in the geek circles] , it is expected that he won't put it this way! Criticism is good but there is a way to go about it! You can't just childishly call anyone a 'Nazi' specially when you are Linus yourself!